The U.S. Power Complex:
What’s New
By Tom Barry, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
T
o discern what’s new about U.S. foreign
policy and its power trip through history, you don’t need to follow the debates
in the foreign policy journals or in Beltway policy circles. The emerging grand strategy of U.S.
foreign policy is readily evident in the pronouncements of President Bush and his top officials. It’s an agenda distinguished by a “moral
clarity,” according to Bush, who has told the
world that the United States has launched an
“endless” war against “evildoers.” His moral clarity about the “axis of evil” and his warning that
you are “either with us or with the terrorists”
reflect an unnuanced approach to using U.S.
power.
The U.S. grand strategy developed by the
Bush administration extends beyond the war
on terrorism to a radical reassessment of U.S.
foreign and military policy in this unipolar
world. As high U.S. officials explain, the
United States is intent on pursuing policies that
prevent the rise of a “peer competitor.” Tossing
aside the traditional “realist” approach to U.S.
security affairs, President Bush in a key foreign
policy speech at West Point in June 2002 outlined a supremacist or neo-imperial agenda of
international security. Not only would the
United States no longer count on coalitions of
great powers to guarantee collective security, it
also would prevent the rise of any potential
global rival—keeping U.S. “military strengths
beyond challenges.”
November 2002
The devil is in the details, so it’s the small
things about the Bush administration rather
than its major policy pronouncements that best
reveal the character and dimensions of the new
U.S. foreign and military policy. As part of the
housekeeping underway in the administration’s
foreign policy apparatus, the Defense
Department in early 2002 announced the closing of the Army’s Peacekeeping Institute
(PKI).1 With its $200,000 operating budget,
the PKI is the only government agency devoted
to studying how to secure peace in failed
nations or post-conflict situations. “This is not
our strength or our calling,” candidate Bush
said in 1999 address when he emphatically
rejected a U.S. role in peacekeeping.2 Close
observers inside and outside the Pentagon said
that the announced closure of the peacekeeping
institute reflected the disdain with which
Secretar y of Defense Rumsfeld and other
hawks have for the soft side—the liberal internationalist side—of international relations.
The decision of the Bush administration to
renounce the Clinton administration’s signing
of the treaty creating the International
Criminal Court made international news.
However, Arms Control Undersecretary John
Bolton’s statement that signing the letter
renouncing the Rome Statute “was the happiest
Tom Barry <[email protected]> is a senior analyst at the
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irconline.org), and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. A version of
this essay will appear in Global Power Trip edited by John Feffer and
published by Seven Stories Press (forthcoming Spring 2003).
Special Report #20
$5.00
FOREIGN POLICY IN F CUS
Special Report
page 2
The Terms of Power
Balance of Power: This concept of international relations originated in Europe in the
mid-1600s and asserts that hegemonic ambitions of nation-states will lead inevitably
to war in the absence of power balancing, whereby weaker powers either strive to increase
their own military power or to counter the superior military capacity of neighboring nations.
Along with containment and deterrence, balance-of-power geopolitics has been a core
component of realist foreign policy decisionmaking. A related strategy, sometimes used
by hegemonic powers for managing international security, is “off-shore balancing,” which
calls for increased participation of lesser powers in addressing international and regional crises.
Benign Hegemony: Unlike coercive forms of hegemony, such as Japan’s prewar
regional Coprosperity Sphere in East Asia, benign hegemony (also referred to as
“benevolent hegemony”) ensures respect for leadership by encouraging a widespread
sharing of economic benefits and frequent consultations with lesser powers. The actions
of the hegemon, empire, or imperial power are commonly justified by the argument
that they are motivated by benign or benevolent objectives. After the Second World
War, the U.S. won respect as a benign hegemon because of its geopolitical strategy
of liberal internationalism, its security umbrella in Europe and Asia benefiting former
enemies, and its relatively transparent and democratic process of governance at home.
Collective Security: In response to the dismal failures of balance-of-power systems
leading to the two world wars, the allied nations (led by the U.S. and Great Britain)
launched two institutions—first the League of Nations following WWI and later the
United Nations following WWII—that were founded on the principles that an attack on
one nation was a concern to all nations and that the threat of collective response
would prevent such aggression.
Common Security: This emerging concept of international relations advanced by
NGOs and progressive scholars holds that “balance-of-power,” “collective security,”
and hegemonic power fall short of building enduring peaceful international relations.
The concept stresses that nations and civil society organizations, building on multilateral structures, need to begin defining common interests that will ensure not only
national security but also “human security.”
Conservative Internationalism: Adherents of this grand strategy of U.S. global
engagement trace its origins to the interventionism of Presidents William McKinley
and Teddy Roosevelt and more recently to the interventionism and rollback strategy
of the Reagan administration. Like liberal internationalism, the conservative variety
rejects realist and isolationist approaches to foreign policy, which focus narrowly on
U.S. economic interests and direct threats to U.S. national security, and posits instead
that U.S. interests and security should be broadly interpreted to include the spread of
economic and political liberalism. The differences between these two types of internationalism, however, are greater than their similarities. Conservative internationalism
explicitly holds that the U.S. military should be the main enforcer of international order
and norms and the main instrument to ensure that those nations that fall outside U.S.
favor undergo regime changes. It asserts that in its role as hegemon, the U.S. is exempt
(U.S. exceptionalism) from the constraints of international norms, rule of law, and multilateralism. Conservative internationalism stands firmly behind the nation-state as the
main actor in global affairs and rejects notions that globalization and multidimensional
international engagement are creating new foundations for multilateral governance.
Neoconservatives are the main exponents of conservative internationalism.
continued, page 4
—>
moment of my government
service” told more about the
administration’s ideologically driven campaign against multilateral
c o n s t r a i n t s o n U . S . p o w e r.
Similarly, while the administration’s opposition to the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change is well
known, its determination to undermine all efforts to establish international norms on fossil fuel usage
could be best appreciated in its
maneuvering to replace Robert
Watson, the respected chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, as a way to
undermine the panel’s credibility.
And the power of petropolitics in
shaping U.S. policy was also
exposed in a leaked memo from
ExxonMobil that had previously
asked the White House: “Can
Watson be replaced now at the
request of the U.S.?”3
Such details underscore the fundamental shifts in the policy discourse of the Bush presidency.
What’s at stake for the Bush foreign
policy team is the future of U.S.
power. To make the 21st century
the new American century, the
hawks and neoconservatives who
have gained the upper hand in the
administration want a fundamental
reordering of the strategy of U.S.
global engagement. The old strategies of realism and liberal internationalism that worked in tandem to
ensure that America reigned hegemonic during the 20th century are,
they argue, outdated in today’s
world in which U.S. power is no
longer constrained by another
page 3
superpower.4 Realism—with its
attendant balance-of-power politics, great power alliances, deterrence, and containment—is no
longer applicable in a unipolar
world characterized by major
power imbalances between the
United States and all other nations.
Like wise, the Wilsonian and
Rooseveltan strategies of enlightened self-interest designed to build
economic and political alliances
under U.S. benign hegemony are
also deemed, for the most part,
unnecessary and out of touch with
today’s global power structure. So,
too, are liberal geopolitical strategies such as the democracy
“enlargement” policies and humanitarian interventionism of the
1990s that stressed inclusion and
rules-based systems. For the Bush
foreign policy team, the United
States should now exercise power
unimpeded by par tnerships,
alliances, and rules—and without
apology for its imperial status.5
What’s needed is a grand strategy
of supremacy. No other nation has
wielded such undisputed power—
economic, military, technological,
diplomatic, and cultural—over so much
territory. The U.S. should rid itself of its
power complex—its liberal guilt and
ambivalence about its supremacy—
FROM HEGEMONY
S
ince the 1880s America has
had hegemonic ambitions to
shape the development of the
international political and economic
systems—first as a junior partner to
Great Britain and then in its own
right as the world’s military and
technological power with the
leadership that proved key to defeating the Axis powers and setting
forth the ideological vision of a
postwar framework of capitalist
international relations managed by a
system of multilateralism under
U.S. management.
The industrialized capitalist nations
commonly regarded the U.S. as a
benign hegemon—one that managed
TO
and pursue with conviction a grand
strategy of neoimperialism.
Proponents of this neoimperial
strategy of global engagement rest
their case on two indisputable facts of
post-cold war international relations:
the depth of U.S. power and the
absence of alternative manifestations
of global leadership backed by military
might. If one thinks first about U.S.
national interests and national
security, then the objective of any
grand strategy, according to the new
imperialists, should be to maintain
and enhance this U.S. power—to
prolong what neoconservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer
calls the “unipolar moment.”
SUPREMACY
an economic system in which all
major players benefited, including
former Axis nations, and provided
a military umbrella that offered
security without financial burden.
But the ideological and military
rivalry of the cold war checked the
geographical reach of U.S. hegemony. The lofty visions of multilateralism, international cooperation,
and international rule set forth by the
architects of the UN system of global
governance still largely framed the
official discourse of global affairs,
although the chessboard politics of
the superpower rivalry defined the
era. The Whites under U.S. hegemonic
leadership and the Reds under the
imperial sway of the Soviet Union
kept global affairs firmly rooted in
balance-of-power politics.
The bipolar power balance kept
U.S. in the check—constraining its
unilateral, interventionist impulses
while obliging it to rely on the “soft
power” of aid and diplomacy to
maintain allegiances. By the 1980s
the realpolitik constraints on U.S.
power began to loosen, as the U.S.
sensed deepening deterioration of
Soviet power and of the credibility
of the socialist alternative. At the
same time, the Reagan administration—benefiting from a new
fusionist trend in rightwing thinking uniting anti-socialists, national
security militarists, social conserva-
page 4
The Terms of Power
Empire: The territory controlled, directly or indirectly, by an imperial nation, which
retains control of colonies and subjects by dictate and exercise of military power.
Exceptionalism: An enduring belief in U.S. moral superiority that gives America special rights to unilateralism and frees it from the rules and norms that bind other
nations to the international community. This conviction in U.S. virtue and in America’s
messianic mission in global affairs has been reinforced through the centuries by its
mounting economic, military, and cultural power.
Global Governance: The collection of multilateral institutions, international agreements, rules, norms, and standards, country groupings (like the G8), and other formal
and informal processes that serve to regulate governmental and private behavior
across national boundaries in matters ranging from international air transportation
and postal service to security issues, environmental degradation, and trade.
Hegemony: The structure of power relations in which one nation (a hegemon)
assumes leadership and responsibility over world or regional systems primarily by
virtue of its superior financial, commercial, and productive power and secondarily by
its military power.
Imperialism: A system by which the dominant power, through military conquest, colonization, or direct control of investment and trade, expropriates the land, natural
resources, and labor of another people for its own enrichment.
Imperium: An informal empire, allowing some degree of autonomy to member states
but requiring strong leadership backed by global policing and military power.
Isolationism: Strictly defined, U.S. isolationism refers to the political consensus of
the founding fathers that the U.S. should define its foreign policy and interventionism
apart from the balance-of-power dynamics of Europe. It was this isolationism that
shaped populist America First sentiment against U.S. involvement in World War II and
the League of Nations. Today, elements of this traditional isolationism remain and
have come to the fore in the anti-European sentiment within the circle of neoconservative strategists shaping Bush’s foreign policy. However, isolationism is commonly
used to refer to inward-looking and antiglobalist sentiments against U.S. involvement
in international crises (humanitarian, economic, and military) that do not directly
affect U.S. national interests.
Liberal Internationalism: A policy framework most closely identified with President
Woodrow Wilson that encourages U.S. international engagement, including military
interventions, to bring U.S. values and political systems—freedom, democracy, free
market economies—to the rest of the world. Driven by liberal values—both economic
and political—U.S. liberal internationalism has often provided the moral argument for
what in fact were policies of neoimperialism that directly served U.S. economic interests. As shaped by Presidents Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, America’s liberal
internationalism has been closely tied to its support of a multilateral framework as the
best way of ensuring international peace and development. As such, America’s liberal
internationalist impulses contributed to widespread sentiment, both at home and
abroad, that the U.S. was a benign hegemon.
Machtpolitik: Political relations defined by the decisive use of superior military power.
continued, page 6
—>
tives, free market ideologues, and
neoconservatives—mounted a military and ideological offensive. Its
confident assertion that there is no
alternative to “free-market democracies,” its move from “containment” to “roll-back” strategies, and
its new military build-up foreshadowed and laid the global power trip
of the George W. Bush administration. Although the militarism of
the Reagan administration did reignite the type of transnational
opposition to U.S. global leadership that arose during the Vietnam
War (reviving talk of U.S. imperialism), the upsurge in backing for
U.S.-style economic and political
liberalism actually strengthened
U.S. hegemonic influence.6
The end of the cold war left U.S.
foreign policy without a defining
legacy. In the absence of the anticommunist core of foreign policy,
no political sector—left, liberal,
centrist, conservative, right—could
persuasively articulate a new vision
for U.S. global engagement. The
“New World Order” of the Bush Sr.
administration was met with derision from the right, as was the
“assertive multilateralism,” “strategic partner” policies, revived liberal
internationalism of the Clinton
administrations. The left focused
almost exclusively on backlash politics opposing the new liberal-conservative consensus on free trade,
while alternatively supporting and
critiquing the liberal-centrist consensus around humanitarian interventionism. Also focused largely on
backlash politics against the per-
page 5
ceived liberalism of the Clinton
presidency and largely bereft of
their core anticommunism, the
right initially reacted rather than
proposed a new vision of U.S. foreign and military policy.
U.S. supremacy. The radical agenda, clearly articulated and promoted by administration hardliners
from the start of the Bush presidency, quickly advanced after the
September 11th terrorism.
In the mid-1990s, however, a
new coherent vision of U.S. foreign
and military policy started taking
shape—one that brought together
the traditionalist concerns of the
social conservatives (culture wars,
dominionism of Christian Right),
military/industrial complex advocates, and neoconservative ambition to reassume control of foreign
policy apparatus. Dismissive of
arguments about new transnational
threats to global stability (climate
change, resource scarcity conflicts,
infectious disease), the new vision
was at once simple and grandiose.
Simple in that U.S. foreign and
military policy should not get
bogged down in conflicts and
humanitarian crises that had no
direct bearing on U.S. national
interests and U.S. national security.7 Grandiose in that U.S. foreign
and military policy should embrace
U.S. global dominance and do
whatever is necessary to maintain
But what’s really new about U.S.
foreign and military policy? After
In the absence of the
anticommunist core of
foreign policy, no political
sector—left, liberal, centrist,
conservative, right—could
persuasively articulate a new
vision for U.S. global
engagement.
all, the U.S. has a long history of
throwing its weight around, intervening militarily, sidelining the
United Nations, allying itself with
dictators and human rights abusers,
and asserting for itself high ground
of morality and the blessing of the
almighty. It has even dropped the
big one—twice—to demonstrate
its overwhelming power.
What’s different and what’s so
alarming about the new U.S. grand
strategy are three qualitatively different components of U.S. foreign
and military policy: aggressive antimultilateralism, warlordism, and
moral absolutism. Underlying and
fortifying all three currents is the
language of antiterrorism, which
has replaced anticommunism as the
core organizing and unifying
principle.
Like anticommunism before it, a
foreign policy framed by antiterrorism
assures bipartisan consensus and
has popular resonance. It establishes a
logic for strategic alliances with unsavory partners (from Israel to Saudi
Arabia), justifies increases in military
budgets, and provides a persuasive
rationale for an “endless war”
against evil. As part of the “new
realism” emerging in Washington,
the focus is on coalitions and
alliance of convenience with both
minor regional powers such as
Pakistan and with the second-tier
“great powers” such as Russia.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST MULTILATERALISM
T
he threat of global governance, blue-helmeted
peacekeepers, multilateral-
ism, and international rules and
treaties has always featured prominently in right-wing agendas. In the
Reagan administration, this antimultilateralism agenda came thundering out of the White House’s
page 6
The Terms of Power
Multilateralism: A structure to manage international and regional affairs that constrains unilateral behavior through institutional mechanisms (treaties, international
law, and a voting process) that ensure consultation and agreement. In the wake of
World War II, there was broad consensus that national interests would be best served
by multilateral systems that fostered consensus.
Multipolar, Bipolar, Unipolar: Since the beginning of the 20th century, the international system has evolved from a multipolar arrangement (including five great
European powers, Japan, and the U.S.) to a bipolar standoff during the cold war to a
unipolar world since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
New Realism: With respect to U.S. foreign policy, new realism refers to the Bush
administration’s rejection of the liberal impulses of the Clinton administration—its inclination toward humanitarian interventionism, multilateralism, social clauses in trade
agreements, etc.—and to the current unapologetic acceptance of U.S. supremacy.
Great power relations, under this new realist framework, are to be managed not by
traditional balance-of-power arrangements but rather as part of a grand strategy of
maintaining and enhancing U.S. supremacy, particularly military superiority.
Realism: This approach to foreign policy decisionmaking focuses strictly on national
interests and security, rejecting idealism and values-driven policies. It stresses the
centrality of the nation-state and improving the position and power of the U.S. relative
to other nations. It is closely associated with a worldview or philosophy of international relations known as realpolitik, which stresses that nations act in pursuit of their own
interests and in accordance to their degree of power. Realists reject isolationism and
internationalism in both their liberal and conservative manifestations.
Realpolitik: A hard-headed, cold-soul approach to international affairs by which foreign policy decisions respond directly and immediately to what furthers U.S. national
interests and security. Realpolitik rejects the idealist, value-laden foreign policy of “liberal internationalism” as well as the supremacist assumptions of conservative internationalism, focusing instead on managing power relations and manipulating them
through diplomacy deterrence—and force when necessary—to protect U.S. economic
interests and national security.
Supremacism: This policy framework embraces the U.S. superpower status in a
unipolar world. For its adherents, it is a policy firmly based in “new realist” assessment of power balances—namely, that as the predominant power whose military
might is beyond challenge, the U.S. cannot and should not be bound by multilateral
constraints. American power should be used to ensure that the U.S. maintains its
dominance both in order to protect its national interests and because it is this very
dominance that now underpins what the supremacists call “the American peace.”
Unilateralism: A pattern of international engagement in which one nation acts outside the framework of bilateral (between two countries) or multilateral (involving many
countries) agreements and negotiation.
bully pulpit. Deprived of anticom-
found that attacks on the UN and
munism as the belief holding dis-
all forms of global governance res-
parate right-wing forces together,
onated with an economically and
the populist right in the mid-1990s
culturally more insecure America.
Rejecting as liberal hogwash the
“assertive
multilateralism”
of
Madeleine Albright, the Republican
Congress appealed to the individualism of Americans, making simultaneous cases against big government and for U.S. unilateralism.
The team around George W. Bush,
departing from the internationalism
and moderate conservatism of the
Bush Sr. administration, steadily
chipped away at a target list of
international treaties and conventions that constrained U.S. freedom
of action, while at the same time
ensuring that the officials appointed
to UN agencies and commission
would do the U.S. bidding.8
Critics of the different assaults
on instances of multilateralism,
whether it be the climate change
treaty, arms trade convention, or any
other attempt to institute international
norms and rules, argued that longterm U.S. interests and national
security were being undermined,
not protected. The thickening web
of multilateral regimes and treaties
is regarded, as one astute observer
of multilateralism noted, as
Lilliputian attempts to tie down
Gulliver.9 Even more alarming than
the adverse impact on any one
international problem addressed by
these multilateral efforts under
U.S. attack is the possibility that
the net result may be the disintegration of the entire post-World
War II framework of multilateralism, thrusting global affairs into a
Hobbesian world where power not
reason prevails.10 The vision of
Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and
page 7
Woodrow Wilson earlier in the
20th century of an intergovernmental framework to prevent war,
promote peace and prosperity, and
protect rights is being tossed into
the historical dustbin by the Bush
administration. Confident of its
own military superiority, the U.S.
government believes it can respond
to all security threats.
Leaving aside the concern that as
global sheriff the United States will
address only military threats to its
own security, the Bush administration’s dismissal of multilateralism
also deprives the world of the international mechanisms to respond to
nontraditional security issues such
as resource conflicts, rise in infectious disease, international crime,
and environmental degradation.
Hardliners such as Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, and Richard Cheney hold a
very traditional view of national
security that leaves little or no
room for inclusion of threats to
“human security,” let alone for consideration of proposals for new
forms of global governance to
address these nontraditional yet
very real threats.
WARLORDISM
I
ronically, since the end of the
cold war the influence of the
Pentagon has increased while
the State Department control over
foreign policy has steadily diminished.11 In the 1990s, foreign economic policy trumped traditional
diplomacy, giving the imperatives of
the Commerce and Treasur y
Departments a central place in U.S.
international affairs. While the State
Department and its Agency for
International Development were
being downsized, the power and
responsibilities of the regional commands of the Pentagon deepened as
training programs, joint military
exercises, and U.S. military presence
expanded around the globe—particularly in Africa, Latin America, and
Eurasia.12 It was a decade framed by
two post-cold war wars, starting with
the massive Persian Gulf deployment and ending with the bombing
of Yugoslavia. In this new era, the
U.S. military found new freedom to
act without fear of Soviet reaction
Like anticommunism
before it, a foreign policy
framed by antiterrorism
assures bipartisan consensus
and has popular resonance.
while at the same time largely free
from anti-interventionist backlash
at home. Indeed, progressives and
liberals were among the main proponents of a more assertive U.S.
military, especially in cases of purported humanitarian intervention.
From this base, the national security militarists have seized control of
the Bush administration’s foreign
and military policy. Strategic outlooks, doctrinal changes, vast increases
in military/homeland defense budgets, and dismissive treatment of the
traditionalists and soft-power advocates—all summarized in the administration’s “National Security Strategy
of the United States” released in
September 2002—constitute the
rise of a new warlordism in the U.S.
government. Reveling in U.S. military superiority, the administration
left behind the stock strategic thinking about balance-of-power and
common security arrangements.
Instead of the realpolitik that has
characterized conservative foreign
policy strategizing, the United States
has reverted to “machtpolitik” or the
exercise of sheer military power,
unconstrained by international
norms, treaties, or alliances.
page 8
In launching its raids, policing
actions, and invasions, the United
States still recognizes the need for
partners to increase credibility and
logistical operating room. But these
would be ad hoc coalitions of the
willing, not preexisting alliances
such as NATO—and the United
States will always define the mission and lead it. In the early days of
the Afghanistan bombing campaign, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
brushed aside diplomatic considerations and spoke with the confidence of a warlord: “The mission
must determine the coalition; the
coalition must not determine the
mission. If it does, the mission will
be dumbed down to the lowest
common denominator and we can’t
afford that.”13
The doctrinal changes follow
logically from this powerball perspective. Instead of what Pentagon
officials call a “threat-based” military doctrine, they are now moving
toward a “capabilities-based
approach.”14 Instead of defining
real and imminent threats to
national security, U.S. military
doctrine is pursuing permanent
military superiority that will give
the United States the capacity to
defeat any conceivable attack. This
“break-out” strategy of ensuring
military predominance did not
emerge full-blown out of the Bush
administration, but was developing
since the early 1990s as military
strategists and military/complex
lobbyists searched for a new bogeyman to replace the Soviet Union. It
is what one Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst identified as the
“sum of all fears” approach.15
To ensure this “endless military
supremacy,” the Pentagon wants—
and is getting—lots of money. The
largest increase in the military budget since the Reagan years provides
plenty of pork for the “legacy” systems of traditional warfare along
with hefty allocations for “transfor-
Instead of what Pentagon
officials call a “threat-based”
military doctrine, they are
now moving toward a
“capabilities-based
approach.”
mative” systems, including national
missile defense, designed to ensure
U.S. military supremacy far into
the future. In keeping with the
supremacy doctrine, President
Bush shocked the international
community with his announcement during a speech at West Point
that the U.S. was shedding the old
doctrines of containment and
deterrence in favor of preemption.
The U.S. would no longer wait
until attacked but would preempt
future aggression with its own first
strikes, not just against terrorist
networks but nation-states themselves. Richard Falk warned that
the United States is claiming “a
right to abandon rules of restraint
and of law patiently developed over
t h e c o u r s e o f c e n t u r i e s . ” 16
Piggybacking on this new doctrine
of preemption is the administration’s ne w nuclear doctrine.
Rejecting a half-centur y of
attempts to constrain the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons,
the U.S. new nuclear posture proposes that the United States consider using nuclear weapons against
five non-nuclear countries if it is
determined by Washington that
they are developing biological,
chemical, or nuclear weapons. At
the same time, the U.S. will develop for itself a new arsenal of
n u c l e a r - t i p p e d c o n ve n t i o n a l
weapons. This is all part of what
the administration calls its “counterproliferation” policy.
U.S. wardlordism doesn’t tolerate
rivals, validates first-strike warfare,
and spurns conflict-prevention
strategies and negotiating frameworks. The new warlordism keeps
counsel not with diplomats but
with arms merchants. As is now
commonly observed and acknowledged, Rumsfeld’s war department
“doesn’t do windows.”
page 9
MORAL ABSOLUTISM
O
ur leaders have invariably
couched U.S. foreign and
military initiatives in the
rhetoric of political idealism. This
practice of dressing U.S. international engagement in the values of
freedom, democracy, and rights
came to be known as “liberal internationalism.” Bush’s foreign policy
explicitly rejects the imperatives of
liberal internationalism, but it is
nonetheless heavily value-laden. The
ne w supremacy agenda taps
America’s deep moral roots and
sense of messianic mission. Instead
of liberal political values, the
supremacists driving U.S. foreign
policy are more comfortable with
stark moral contrasts, linking
America’s foreign policy mission to
the apocalyptic conflict between
good and evil.
This new moral absolutism has
helped ease the transition from the
targeted war on international terrorist networks to the much broader
confrontation with the “axis of evil”
nation-states. The grand moral scale
of Bush’s foreign policy has also
been used to justify its focus on the
end goal of conquering evil and its
dismissal of concerns about the
means employed. Allying ourselves
with repressive regimes, overriding
human rights conditionalities on
U.S. aid, violating the conventions
of international law, and standing
In keeping with the
supremacy doctrine,
President Bush shocked the
international community
with his announcement during a speech at West Point
that the U.S. was shedding
the old doctrines of containment and deterrence in
favor of preemption.
behind a policy of “regime changes”
and first strikes are all acceptable
means in Bush’s endless war against evil.
The America First convictions of
the Bush supremacists echoes the
“city upon a hill” belief structure of
America’s Puritan underpinnings,
as articulated in 1630 by John
Winthrop, the first governor of
Massachusetts.17 Over the past five
centuries, American society has
continued to believe in its own
moral transcendence, but our city
on the hill has undergone major
urban renewal. For the first several
centuries, our vision of a moral
beacon was decidedly U.S.-centric,
explaining in part America’s isolationist tendencies when dealing
with Europe. In the 20th century,
especially after the start of the cold
war, the moral values of our blessed
city were commonly regarded as core
Western principles. The neoconservative “end of history” and “clash of
civilization” interpretations of history
fortified American conviction that
our Judeo-Christian transatlantic
culture constituted the epitome of
civilization. With the recent rise of U.S.
supremacy thinking, “West against
the rest” imaginings have been set
in favor of America First principles
and exceptionalism. Our new moral
absolutism regards Europeans as
moral relativists, political opportunists, and weak-kneed partners
afraid to speak evil’s name.18
Introducing the Project Against the Present Danger:
www.presentdanger.org
“Standing in Defense of International Law, International Cooperation, & Multilateralism”
page 10
A TURNING POINT
A
merica is suffering from a
power complex that is distorting national priorities.
So wrapped up in its conviction of
supremacy, the U.S. government forges
ahead with its new foreign policy
directions while ignoring the mounting global outrage, blowback, and
impact of its aggressive unilateralism.
Politics, like history itself, is
marked by cycles and pendulum
swings. It may be that the recent
rightward shifts in U.S. foreign and
military policy will be turned back
by the next administration or
Congress. There are also signs that
as the hawks and hardliners pursue
their neo-imperial agenda they are
coming up hard against the exigencies of realpolitik—the need for
alliances, the importance of multilateral cover, and the successful
diplomatic maneuvering of other
powers to set alternative agendas in
motion—and the need for the soft
power and the moderate multilateralism of the State Department as
well as for nation-building and
peacekeeping following war.
eral framework for managing global affairs at the close of World War
II certainly was one of those major
turning points.
But politics and history are also
marked by turning points when the
confluence of events and human
It remains to be seen if the
supremacy agenda of the Bush
administration—with its dismissal
of international cooperation, its
“peace through strength” credo,
and its endless war on evil—will be
only a passing political moment or the
ideological and operative framework for international relations in
the early 21st century. At least part
of the answer will depend on the
willingness of Americans to reach
beyond their deeply felt sense of
victimization in the aftermath of
September 11, 2001 and commit
ourselves to some serious soulsearching about this country’s
deepening power complex. Only
then might America regain the
capacity to exercise its power
responsibly.
So wrapped up in its conviction of supremacy, the U.S.
government forges ahead
with its new foreign policy
directions while ignoring the
mounting global outrage,
blowback, and impact of its
aggressive unilateralism.
intervention cause fundamental
shifts in prevailing ideologies and
systems. The creation of a multilat-
Comments on the In Focus briefs and special reports are found in
The Progressive Response,
the project’s weekly electronic forum.
To subscribe, email [email protected]
page 11
ENDNOTES
1 Jim Lobe, “Army Peacekeeping Institute Sent Packing,” TomPaine.com, July 17, 2002.
2 President George W. Bush, “A Period of Consequences,” Speech delivered at The Citadel, September 23, 1999,
<http://citadel.edu/pao/addresses/pres_bush.html>.
3 Ian Williams, “The U.S. Hit List at the United Nations,” Foreign Policy In Focus, April 30, 2002.
4 For an excellent treatment of ways realism and liberal internationalism combined to shape the U.S. grand strategy during the cold war
see: G. John Ikenberry, “America’s Imperial Ambition,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2002.
5 An early argument to this effect came from neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol at the American Enterprise Institute. Kristol, “The
Emerging American Imperium,” August 1997, <http://www.aei.org/oti/otii7998.htm>.
6 In the 1990s, the strong U.S. hegemonic position was well illustrated by the acceptance by most governments of the neoliberal principles of the “Washington Consensus.”
7 National interests are rarely well defined, but in practice the national interests that the U.S. government has defended have been the
interests of corporate America, not the broader interests of the polity. For a discussion of how national interests can be furthered by
international norms and multilateralism, see Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Cornell University Press,
1996).
8 John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, is the most outspoken opponent of multilateralism within the administration, representing the right-wing’s ideological opposition to global governance. However, it has been National Security Adviser Condeleezza Rice
who has best articulated the administration’s pragmatic posture with respect to multilateralism. During the campaign, she criticized the
Democrats for subordinating U.S. national interests to “the interests of an illusory international community” and for maintaining the
liberal “belief that the support of many states—or even better, of institutions like the United Nations—is essential to the legitimate exercise of power.” While not completely rejecting all instances of multilateralism, the administration would pick and choose—what the
State Department’s Director of Policy Planning called “multilateralism a la carte.” It has long been accepted that nations must act unilaterally to defend their most basic interests—a practice described by the Clinton administration as “multilateral when we can, unilateral
when we must.” The Bush administration, in contrast, rejects the post-World War II premise that multilateralism is generally the best
route in the pursuit of national interests. For an exploration of these themes, see Stewart Patrick, “Don’t Fence Me In: A Restless
Americas Seeks Room to Roam,” World Policy Journal, Fall 2001.
9 Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2002. The growing size of the multilateral web is not the paranoiac perception of rightist
ideologues but a fact of international relations. “Between 1970 and 1997, the number of international treaties more than tripled, and
from 1985-1999 alone, the number of international institutions increased by two-thirds.” Stewart Patrick, “Multilateralism and Its
Discontents: Causes and Consequences of U.S. Ambivalence,” in Patrick and Shephard Forman, eds., Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign
Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), p. 12.
10 The first analyst to liken the Bush administration’s philosophy of power to that of Hobbes was Jim Lobe. See Jim Lobe, “Welcome to
a Hobbesian World,” Inter Press Service, March 9, 2001.
11 In the U.S. international affairs budget, 93% is dedicated to the military and 7% to the State Department.
12 Dana Priest, “A Four-Star Foreign Policy? U.S. Commanders Wield Rising Clout,” Washington Post, September 28, 2000, page A1;
“Reinventing War,” Foreign Policy, November/December 2001, no. 127, pp. 31-47.
13 “Q & A with Donald Rumsfeld,” Chicago Sun-Times, November 18, 2001.
14 Michael Klare, “Endless Military Superiority,” The Nation, July 15, 2002.
15 Russell E. Travers, “The New Millennium and a Strategic Breathing Space,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1997.
16 Richard Falk, “The New Bush Doctrine,” The Nation, July 15, 2002.
17 In a precautionary addendum, one that may speak to U.S. supremacist hubris, John Winthrop warned that should we fail to make our
city on the hill a model of hope and virtue and should we “deal falsely with our God,” then we would be cursed. James Chace,
“Imperial America and the Common Interest,” World Policy Journal, Winter 2002.
18 For a representative presentation of this argument, see Robert Kagan, Policy Review, June/July 2002,
<http://www.ceip.org/files/print/2002-06-02-policyreview.htm>. Kagan’s lead sentence advises, “It is time to stop pretending that
Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world.”
page 12
Project
Against
the Present
Danger
The history of global affairs has been marked by major turning
points—times when the systems and processes that shape
relations among nations shift dramatically. We are alarmed that
the domination of U.S. foreign policy by militarists and unilateralists is undermining the constructive, peaceful management of
global affairs. By devaluing diplomacy, cooperation, and negotiations, U.S. foreign policy has created new distrust for U.S.
global leadership.
– excerpt from the Statement of Concern
Foreign Policy In Focus
Special Report
November 2002
Foreign Policy in Focus is a joint project of the
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Tonya Cannariato (IRC)
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